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And last month, Chidambaram wanted his colleagues to stick to the original version of the food security bill under which 18 out of 29 states would get less wheat and rice than allotted to them under an existing public distribution system because of a drop in the number of poor there. But other members of the cabinet resisted him, warning that the opposition could block the landmark bill - which guarantees 810 million Indians grain at a fraction of market prices - when it got to parliament. Their argument carried the day, at an additional cost of 50 billion rupees a year. "There is no point fighting it beyond a point," said a finance ministry official, recalling the wrangling over the legislation. "What we have said is that it's fine: you do this because that is the demand of the constituents, but you will have to cut somewhere." Many in the left-leaning Congress led by Sonia Gandhi believe that the fruits of India's fast growth since it unshackled the economy from the grip of the state in the early 1990s were not shared with the country's millions of poor, and that electoral success lies in more distribution. Critics say the problem is that a new group of aggressive second-rung leaders in the Congress party, pushing for 'inclusive growth', are setting out new principles of economic policymaking, creating further dissonance within government. "Individual ministers and ministries are all running on their own.

Markets close in 5 hrs 30 mins Stock Watch ServiceSource Advances Business With HR, Finance, and Payroll in the Workday Cloud Workday Financial Management Creates Greater Ease and Speed for Company During Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Press Release: Workday, Inc. 2 hours 0 minutes ago PLEASANTON, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 3, 2013) - Workday, Inc. ( NYSE ), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for human resources and finance , announced today that ServiceSource ( NASDAQ : SREV ), the global leader in recurring revenue management, has significantly advanced its business processes globally with Workday's suite of applications including Workday Human Capital Management (HCM), Workday Financial Management, Workday Payroll, and Workday Procurement. With Workday's unified system, ServiceSource has been able to scale with growth, improve business performance, and successfully complete its first SOX compliance self-assessment and audit with greater ease and speed in the cloud. When ServiceSource went public in 2011, it was operating multiple systems across HR, finance, and payroll, with three independent business processes for North America, Asia, and Europe. To keep pace with fast growth and the requirements of being a public company, ServiceSource needed an enterprise system that could easily scale, adapt quickly to changes, standardize business processes across the globe, and provide greater transparency into the organization. With Workday, all company locations are now using the same processes while meeting local requirements for compliance. And, with one system of record, all departments are working with consistent HR, financial, and payroll data, driving greater efficiencies and increasing worker productivity. HR and Finance Shift From Tactical to Strategic With built-in analytics capabilities and automated workflows, Workday's unified system has enabled ServiceSource to simplify administrative processes, such as business process routing and approvals, to focus more www.firstfinancialuk.com on analyzing data for strategy and problem solving. These analytics capabilities are empowering finance professionals to focus more on activities that move the company forward, such as analyzing revenue and spend for insights into profitability and areas for cost savings, instead of tactical tasks such as confirming transactions with other departments.

consumer lending business of its finance arm with an initial public offering of stock that could come early next year, according to The www.firstfinancialuk.com Wall Street Journal. The newspaper also said Friday that the Fairfield, Conn., conglomerate is considering smaller spinoffs or asset sales, but it has started preliminary work on the IPO. The paper cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter. The consumer finance business provides store credit cards to about 55 million people for retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. It accounts for $50 billion of GE Capital's $274 billion in outstanding loans, according to the report. Aside from its finance business, GE sells a wide variety of industrial equipment and appliances around the world. This includes jet engines, medical diagnostic equipment, oil and gas drilling equipment and washing machines. GE spokesman Seth Martin declined to comment on the report.

This political backing has disappeared with the ouster of Mursi in an army-backed uprising in early July; the interim government which is to serve until elections early next year has much less fondness for Islamic finance. But underlying demand among Egypt's mostly Muslim population of 84 million, the country's need to develop what financing sources it can, and the growing role of wealthy Arab countries in the Egyptian economy mean the sector may still grow. "Sukuk will be available in Egypt particularly because they are the sole instrument used by some investors in the Gulf Cooperation Council and southeast Asia," Sherif Sami, the new head of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority, told Reuters last week. Sami stressed his body would only handle the technical side of sukuk issues, and any decision to push forward with legal changes to facilitate sukuk would be political. DEMAND The technocrats who dominate Egypt's new economic policy team, many of them with experience from the Mubarak era, have shown little personal interest in Islamic finance. The image of political Islam has been severely damaged in the eyes of many Egyptians by Mursi's troubled year in office and his weak management of the economy.

The Finance Committee is set to hear from the CEOs of all three institutions and from Ulster Bank management over the next three days, beginning with AIBs David Duffy this afternoon. BoI boss Richie Boucher is up tomorrow, and committee Chairman Ciaran Lynch says he will be asking the Chief Executive for more detail on how they intend to preserve the material. Whilst the responses from other banks were clear, the one from Bank of Ireland was measured at best and reserved at worst, indicating a reluctance, Lynch told TheJournal.ie. Whilst the predominant issue this week will be will be the banks offering sustainable solutions to homeowners, the matter of the Bank of Ireland response will also be an issue. Lynch said the meetings this week would provide the committee with a chance to examine lenders responses to the mortgage crisis in detail, particularly mortgage arrears and the target, that by the end of June 2013, banks should have proposed sustainable mortgage solutions for 20% of distressed borrowers. When the banks were last before us, there were no specific targets in place to provide solutions for First Financial homeowners in arrears. Those targets are now in place and, more specifically, we will consider how the individual banks are meeting their targets and ensuring that there is a consistency of approach in dealing with distressed borrowers. This afternoons AIB session begins at 2pm, and can be viewed online at Oireachtas.ie .

Including newbuildings, the Company has a fleet of 70 vessels, including 24 crude oil tankers (VLCC and Suezmax), two chemical tankers, 12 drybulk carriers, 19 container vessels (including eight newbuildings), two car carriers, six offshore supply vessels, two jack-up drilling rigs (including one newbuilding), two ultra-deepwater semi-submersible drilling rigs and one ultra-deepwater drillship. The fleet is one of the largest in the world and most of the vessels are employed on long-term charters. More information can be found on the Company's website: www.shipfinance.org Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Statements This press release may contain forward looking statements. These statements are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, including Ship Finance management's examination of historical operating trends. Although Ship Finance believes that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond its control, Ship Finance cannot give assurance that it will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or intentions. Important factors that, in the Company's view, could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in this presentation include the strength of world economies and currencies, general market conditions including fluctuations in www.firstfinancialuk.com charter hire rates and vessel values, changes in demand in the tanker market as a result of changes in OPEC's petroleum production levels and worldwide oil consumption and storage, changes in the Company's operating expenses including bunker prices, dry-docking and insurance costs, changes in governmental rules and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities, potential liability from pending or future litigation, general domestic and international political conditions, potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents or political events, and other important factors described from time to time in the reports filed by the Company with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sidiki Kaba, a former president of the International Federation for Human Rights , replaces Aminata Toure as justice minister after she was appointed Senegals second female prime minister on Sept. 1. We want our fellow citizens to feel that their living conditions have improved, Toure told reporters after the new appointments were announced. Senegals $14.3 billion economy is forecast to grow 4.3 percent this year and 5.1 percent in 2014, according to the African Development Bank . The country plans to sell $500 million of 10-year international bonds later this year, the International Monetary Fund said in June. Standard and Poors has a B+ rating on Senegalese debt, which is four levels below investment grade and on par with Zambia and Albania.

Krishna, MD of Grameen Koota; Sohail Hasnie, Principal Energy Specialist, SE Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank; Dr. Liu Thai Ker, former CEO of Housing Development Board Singapore and Advisory Board Chairman of Center for Liveable Cities; Hassan Ahmad, CEO of Mercy Relief; Graham Saunders, Head of Shelter and Settlements at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; Dr. Mohamed El Sioufi, Coordinator, Housing and Slum Upgrading, UN-Habitat, Nairobi; Richard Northcote, Head of Communications, Public Affairs and Sustainability of Bayer MaterialScience; and Efren Penaflorida, 2009 CNN Hero of the Year. The Forum, themed 'Housing as a foundation for breaking the poverty cycle', will feature five discussion tracks, focusing on affordable housing finance, disaster resilience and climate change, shared value and corporate social responsibility leadership, housing policy and advocacy, and sustainable housing solutions. Apart from the Wharton-Habitat housing finance course, the event will feature a one-day workshop on the Eco-Town Framework by the Philippine Climate Change Commission and demonstration/discussion workshops by the Asian Development Bank on energy efficiency technologies and sustainable energy for all. Entry to all workshops is included in the registration fee and seats are limited on a first come first served basis. The Forum is supported by sponsors and partners including Aditya Birla Group, Asian Development Bank, Ayala Corporation, Ayala Land, Bayer MaterialScience, PT Caturkarsa Megatunggal, Cemex Philippines, Citi, Energy Development Corporation, Philippine Housing Urban Development Coordinating Council, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Move.org, and Philippine Climate Change Commission. The media partners of the event are ABS-CBN News Channel, AsianNGO, Channel NewsAsia, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Rappler Inc. Registration for the Forum is at www.aphousingforum.org . About Habitat for Humanity International Habitat for Humanity International is a global nonprofit Christian housing organization that brings people together to build homes, communities and hope. Since 1976, Habitat has served more than 600,000 families by building and improving homes; by advocating for fair and just housing policies; and by providing training and access to resources to help families improve their shelter conditions.

And last month, Chidambaram wanted his colleagues to stick to the original version of the food security bill under which 18 out of 29 states would get less wheat and rice than allotted to them under an existing public distribution system because of a drop in the number of poor there. But other members of the cabinet resisted him, warning that the opposition could block the landmark bill - which guarantees 810 million Indians grain at a fraction of market prices - when it got to parliament. Their argument carried the day, at an additional cost of 50 billion rupees a year. "There is no point fighting it beyond a point," said a finance ministry official, recalling the wrangling over the legislation. "What we have said is that it's fine: you do this because that is First Financial the demand of the constituents, but you will have to cut somewhere." Many in the left-leaning Congress led by Sonia Gandhi believe that the fruits of India's fast growth since it unshackled the economy from the grip of the state in the early 1990s were not shared with the country's millions of poor, and that electoral success lies in more distribution. Critics say the problem is that a new group of aggressive second-rung leaders in the Congress party, pushing for 'inclusive growth', are setting out new principles of economic policymaking, creating further dissonance within government. "Individual ministers and ministries are all running on their own. Nobody is looking at the national interest," said former Home Secretary G.K. Pillai, who served with Chidambaram when he was brought in to fix homeland security after the 2008 attack by militants on the city of Mumbai.